Are you ready for eternity? . . .

Many people believe there is no God because they are con­vinced that science has fully explained how our universe came to be, and if there is a natural explanation of our origins, why would we need a supernatural one?

Perhaps, like many, you see a contest between science and religion and believe that science is the rational and logical explanation for the creation of the universe and religion is the “leap of blind faith” that the more unintelligent take because they just can’t see the truth.

Let's keep an open mind and see what evidence there is on both sides, then you make your own rational decision based on what you read. First let's look at some hard Facts for those of you who are more interested in the science, then let's put things in a more simple form for those who don’t really get all the scientific aspects of Darwinism and evolution, but rely more on common sense and basic reasoning.

Does science alone explain this incredibly beautiful and complex universe we live in?

How does the sun provide just the right amount of energy to light and heat our planet?

Physicist-philosopher Robin Collins has said, “Gravity is fine-tuned to one part in a hundred million billion billion billion billion.” One of the most striking discoveries of modern science has been that the laws and constants of physics unexpectedly conspire in an extraordinary way to make the universe habitable for life.

What makes everything in our orderly world work so well together? Similar to the fine-tuning of physics in the point above, Earth's position in the universe and its intricately choreographed geological and chemical processes work together with such precision and efficiency to create a safe place for humans to live.

Harvard-educated astrophysicist John A. O'Keefe of NASA said, "If the universe had not been made with the most exacting precision, we could never have come into existence, it is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in."

The six feet of DNA coiled inside each and every one of our body's one hundred trillion cells contains a four­ letter chemical alphabet that spells out precise assembly instructions for all the proteins from which our bodies are made. Whenever a sequential arrangement is found that's complex and corresponds to an independent pattern or function, (books, computer code, DNA), this kind of information always implies an intelligent source.

Many scientists today have come to the conclusion that the laws of chemistry and physics cannot explain our experience of consciousness. Professor J. P. Moreland defined consciousness as our introspection, sensations, thoughts, emotions etc. that make us alive and aware. He said, "You can't get something from nothing." If the universe began with dead matter having no conscience, "how then, do you get something totally different-conscious, living, thinking, feeling creatures-from materials that don't have that?"

Darwin himself said, "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." Biochemist Michael Behe has demonstrated exactly that through his description of "irreducibly complex" molecular machines.

These complicated, micro organism machines, such as cilia (Figure A) and bacterial flagella (Figure B), are extremely unlikely to have been built piece-by-piece through Darwinian processes because they had to be fully present in order to function. Other examples include the incredible system of transporting proteins within cells and the intricate process of blood-clotting. Now that we’ve seen some of the scientific facts, let’s look at some basic reasoning.

In one of the points above, J.P. Moreland said, “You can’t get something from nothing.” Well, let’s look at that for a moment. I’m going to borrow an example I heard from one pastor a while back.

Let’s look back billions of years ago, in the midst of nothing there suddenly aspired a dark substance, then there was a big bang! We don’t know what caused the bang, or why, it just happened. As millions of years went by, this substance evolved and developed a fizz and became sweet. As many more millions of years went by, some aluminum molecules started to form around the dark liquid substance and made a perfect cylinder shape, again this new something came from nowhere, it just happened. The aluminum then formed a pop top on the cylinder, and finally the aluminum evolved some red and white color dye forming the words “Coca-Cola”, an expiration date, and a complete ingredient list!

Now, I know what you’re thinking, that’s completely absurd! It would be an insult to anyone’s intelligence to insist that the scenario I just gave were true, and yet, although the universe is infinitely more complex than a can of soda, for some reason people accept it as fact that it just “happened” it somehow came from nowhere, and “Bang!” here we are. So is it logical, or reasonable in any way to assume that if a simple soft drink can’t be formed from nothing, how can the complex universe that we live in have just simply evolved, by pure chance, from “nothing”?

Before the “Theory of Evaluation” and the “Big Bang”, scientists believed that the universe was “eternal”. They couldn’t explain how it came into being by itself, so they claimed that it simply “always was”, it had no beginning. Interesting how these same people who believed the universe is eternal still couldn’t grasp the concept of God because they couldn’t understand a Being that is eternal. Surely God must have come from somewhere, who made Him? But then there would have been the question of who made the being who made God? It could go on forever, which brings us back to the beginning, the God who made our universe is Himself “eternal”.However, now that scientists have come up with the “Big Bang” theory they feel more confident rejecting the idea of an eternal universe along with an eternal Being who could have created it, but, this new theory just seems to bring up more questions than the “It Always Was” theory, such as: if there was something to go “Bang”, where did “it” come from? What caused the “Bang”? Where did the energy source come from?

If someone can believe that matter has existed for all eternity, it always was, and always will be, and that this matter had the ability to spontaneously start the universe, and it was powerful enough and intelligent enough to put our very complex universe together with such precision and order – haven’t you just defined God in the form of “matter”? So then, how is it so difficult to believe in God as a Being? We may not completely understand God, but can you really say He doesn’t exist?

Let’s take another example:

Every time we look at something built by man - a house, a table, a chair - we know it had a builder, someone who assembled it. When we see something that has design, like a watch, a car, an airplane, we know it had a designer who planned it. When we see artwork, like a painting, we know there is an artist who painted it. So, when we see order - say ten bottles lined up in a row - we know there was an "orderer" who set them up that way.

When we look around the universe at things not made by man, what do we see? We see creation, design, art, and order. So if everything man-made has a creator, designer, artist, or orderer behind it, why would we not think that there is a Creator, Designer, Artist, and Orderer behind the universe?Why is it that when we look at Mount Rushmore, we don't say, “Erosion is an amazing thing! Look how it formed the heads of four presidents of the United States?" We realize that would be a fool­ish statement. Whenever we see creation, design, art, or order, it's obvious that there was some intelligent force behind it to make it happen.

If you were to look at a tall building, and I pointed to it and said, "Prove to me that there was a builder for that building." You would probably tell me something like, "That's easy. The building itself is proof that there is a builder."

And of course, you would be 100% correct. We know that you don't just throw some concrete, pipes, glass, paint, wires, etc. into the air and close your eyes only to open them and suddenly find a building in front of you. A building requires a builder. Therefore the building is proof that there is a builder.

So then, the sun, the moon, the stars, the oceans, the sand, each unique snowflake, the three billion pieces of your DNA that are different from mine, are absolute proof that there had to be a Creator of this universe.The fact that you can't see, hear, touch, taste, or smell the builder of a skyscraper doesn't mean that such a person doesn't exist. You don't need “blind faith” to believe there was a builder of a building you can see right in front of you; you just need to look at the evidence and make an informed decision. And the best piece of evidence you could have is the building.

The same is true for the creator of this universe, or God. The evidence left for us to look at is all the evidence we will ever need in order to know that our universe has a Creator.So while many people think that reason is on their side, without any evidence to support their belief that there is no creator, what they actually have is blind faith – the very thing they accuse people of who believe that there is a creator, and this is the reasoning they use as a basis for determining their eternal destiny.

Ok, so let’s take it another step further.

Look at our own solar system.

The earth is positioned at just the right distance from the sun so that we receive exactly the proper amount of heat to support life. The other planets of our solar system are either too close to the sun (too hot) or else too far (too cold) to sustain life.

Any appreciable change in the rate of rotation of the earth would make life impossible. For example, if the earth were to rotate at 1/10th its pres­ent rate, all plant life would either be burned to a crisp during the day or frozen at night.

Temperature variations are kept within reasonable limits due to the nearly circular orbit of the earth around the sun.

The moon revolves around the earth at a distance of about 240,000 miles, causing harmless tides on the earth. If the moon were locat­ed 1/5th of this distance away, the continents would be completely submerged twice a day!

The thickness of the earth's crust and the depth of the oceans appear to be carefully designed. Increases in thickness or depth of only a few feet would so drastically alter the absorption of free oxygen and carbon dioxide that plant and animal life could not exist.

The earth's axis is tilted 23 degrees from the perpendicular to the plane of its orbit. This tilting, combined with the earth's revolution around the sun, causes our seasons, which are absolutely essential for the raising of food supplies.

The earth's atmosphere (especially the ozone layer) serves as a protective shield from lethal solar ultraviolet radiation, which would otherwise destroy all life.

The earth's atmosphere also serves to protect the earth by burning up approximately twenty million meteors each day that enter it at speeds of about 30 miles per second! Without this crucial protection, the danger to life would be immense.

The two primary constituents of the earth's atmosphere are nitrogen (78 percent) and oxygen (20 percent). This delicate and critical ratio is essential to all life forms.

The earth's magnetic field provides important protection from harmful cosmic radiation.

Even well-known astrophysicist Stephen Hawking concluded:“The universe and the laws of physics seem to have been specifically designed for us. If anyone of about 40 physical qualities had more than slightly dif­ferent values, life as we know it could not exist: Either atoms would not be stable, or they wouldn't combine into molecules, or the stars wouldn't form the heavier elements, or the universe would collapse before life could develop, and so on..."

Contrary to popular belief, there are many scientists that have been willing to honestly, logically and rationally weigh the evidence and have determined that the universe could not have come into existence simply by “chance”. Even Hawking, although he remains an evolutionist, stated “It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us."!!

Here are some statements from other scientists showing the conclusions they have reached about the universe's design:

Albert Einstein - “I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details.”

Sir Fred Hoyle (British astrophysicist) -“A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”

Paul Davies (Australian astrophysicist) -“To postulate an infinity of unseen and unseeable universes just to explain the one we do see seems like a case of excess baggage carried to the extreme. It is simpler to postulate one unseen God.”"There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all....It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature’s numbers to make the Universe....The impression of design is overwhelming".

Arno Penzias (Nobel Prize winner in physics) -"Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say 'supernatural') plan."

George Greenstein (astronomer) -As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency—or, rather, Agency—must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?

Alan Sandage - greatest living cos­mologist & winner of Crawford prize in astronomy –"I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing.""The world is too complicated in all parts and interconnections to be due to chance alone. I am convinced that the existence of life with all its order in each of its organisms is simply too well put together. Each part of a living thing depends on all its other parts to function. How does each part know? How is each part specified at conception? The more one learns of biochemistry the more unbelievable it becomes unless there is some type of organizing principle---an architect."

Charles Darwin -“The impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me the chief argument for the existence of God; but whether this is an argument of real value, I have never been able to decide. I am aware that if we admit a first cause, the mind still craves to know whence it came from and how it arose…”

Louis Pasteur (Father of Microbiology, developed "pasteurization") –"The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator.""Science brings men nearer to God."

Sir Isaac Newton stated -"This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being! You may find it hard to believe that God could make everything out of nothing, but the alterna­tive is that nothing turned itself into everything. Which takes more faith to believe?”"This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being."Now that you’ve had a chance to examine the evidence for yourself, I hope you will come to the same logical conclusion that there is indeed, a Creator - a God.

If you would like more information on what God has done for us, and how He make a way for us to get to Him, and you want to know how you can develop a relationship with Him that will be Everlasting, then click this link.

Does God Exist?I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth

And be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how he could

Look up into the heavens and say there is no God.- ABRAHAM LINCOLN

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